And we have another interesting development in the ongoing and ever-expanding idiocy that is the War of the High-Fiving Lawyers Mobile Patent World War. Motorola, now a central player in this worldwide conflict that is hurting consumers' wallets and clogging legal systems all over the world, has come to HTC's rescue by seeking to invalidate the patents Apple sued HTC with earlier this year.

"mrhasbean- Your logic is entirely ridiculous. Quite the contrary, companies will spend more to stay on par with the competition. If we didn't have this tyrannical patent system society would be far better off.

LOL. Right, and if we had flying cars, there would be no ground traffic. Ergo, it would create a whole new set of problems. It's just common sense. If you make it easier for people to copy your inventions, you will have a society that basically sits around waiting for somebody to innovate, and then steals those ideas without investing a dime. Who would want to invest significant dollars and effort in any enterprise, knowing that their competitors will just rip-off whatever they produce? I would argue that this just slows down the pace of innovation. It doesn't increase it. Please understand. What you're complaining about isn't lack of innovation. It's that each innovation is owned by someone in the industry who has his hand out, expecting to be paid. But since those costs are borne by the industry as a whole, it's a fairer system for everyone concerned, at the risk of pricing the little guy out of the market. But that's not to say that the little guy can't produce his own inventions and demand payment. "

Software patents are not being used in the way that you suggest. They were initailly being used as warchests, as arsenals of weapons to counter-attack when someone tries to sue you. Recently there has been the emergence of the patent troll where no counter-attack is possible since the patent troll makes no product.

Also there has been the emergence of patent consortiums such as MPEG LA. This is effectively a little cartel, set up to make it dificult for any new entrant into a market. Fortunately there are often multiple ways to skin a cat, and something new such as webM can indeed enter the market despite the best efforts of the consortium to kill it.

So no ... your contention is myth. Software patents are being used almost exclusively to prevent innovation rather than foster it.

This is effectively precisely the opposite to the effect that patents are supposed to achieve.

Get rid of software patents and everyone involved even peripherally in the software industry will be far better off, including especially the programmers themselves and all of the end users of software. The only hangers-on who will be worse off are the patent lawyers. These are a pure drain on the economy in any event, so no great loss there.